I believe that certain kinds of "willpower" is "a thing that a person can have too much of".

Like I think there is a sense that someone can say "I believe X, Y, Z in a theoretical way that has a lot to say about What I Should Be Doing" and then they say "I will now do those behaviors Using My Willpower!"

And then... for some people... using some mental practices that actually just works!

But then, for those people, they sometimes later on look back at what they did and maybe say something like "Oh no! The theory was poorly conceived! Money was lost! People were harmed! I now regret those actions... that I did on purpose... using willpower. Why didn't I notice the signs that I should have stopped?! :-("

"Tentativity" is, I think, often correlated with prudence.

And I think there is a kind of person who gets their verbal goals from other people, and whose verbal goals are kinda silly, who are actually behaviorally protected from regretful outcomes by their inability to "act on what they verbally endorse doing".

And I think the kind of people who are getting their verbal endorsements from unsafe sources are some of the precise people who should consider that maybe they don't have "weak willpower"... maybe they just have "self protecting tentativity"? <3

The problems you would predict seeing with "too much willpower" are similar, in my mind, to the problems you'd predict from the valley of bad rationality.

I think one technique for "getting yourself to do something" involves linking it to some half-controllable emotion so that accomplishment and action and confidence all sorta "go together". If that is the particular mental praxis that someone uses to "do the things they theoretically endorse doing" to "have more willpower" and it went out of control, and it ended up badly, the results might look something like "hubris". (There are also other ways to coach yourself into doing the things you think you should do, but at least one of the big obvious ones has a failure mode that looks like hubris, I think.)

In a way that is kind of related, this caught my eye for being among the NON productive things:

Sitting on the couch doing nothing

If that works for you the way it does for me, then I predict that in many of those moments your brain's default mode network is activated.

This network is actually probably super important. It seems to help people think about memories, actions, possibilities, other people, and so on... It might help process emotions and regrets and hopes, to build up a better narrative self? Watching movies turns it on, but movies might be superstimulus for "the true purpose" of this mental mode, which is sort of maybe to figure out "your own story", and how your own story could go better?

I have experimented some with meditation specifically with the goal of embracing the DMN (with few definite results) but also I think that a lot of meditative practices (even without having neuroimaging studies to prompt them) already aim to meditators to be "aware of the DMN even though it tries to hide itself from active focus" (and maybe in some meditative schemes they aim to turn it off)?

Anyway. I would caution you against quickly throwing "sitting around seeming to do nothing" right out the window without thinking much about that act (if you ever do get the ability to delete things like that from your life's repertoire).

Strong upvote from me, this is a huge cause issue in my life and I'm sure in many others. Any mental stuff aside, it seems the brain has strong control systems around not wanting to do too much of stuff it doesn't like, and more of stuff it can't get enough of.

One thing I've always wondered about is how a person's affinities and frustrations are made. Why do some people love to write, so much so that time for writing just appears without conscious effort, whereas others find it a grinding chore they can't wait to be done with? What makes some people feel a calling to be, say, a veterinarian or a plumber? Why do most people dislike exercise but a few really love it and couldn't make themselves stop if they tried?

If we can figure this out, maybe we can figure out how to move stuff between categories. Rather than trying to learn how to live with the suck, maybe we can find ways to make stuff not suck, as much as we can, at least.

It's worth mentioning in this context that one of the most remarkable things about the recent wave of GLP-1/GIP drugs is that they seem to have large benefits on, for lack of a better word, willpower and psychiatry. Nor was this expected or predicted AFAIK, or clearly linked solely to the weight-loss: the justification in the animal experiments and early human trials were based purely on physiology and then the human diabetics reporting they felt a less hungry. So this is quite remarkable, and part of why GLP-1/GIP drugs are one of the best things to happen to public health in a long time - not just the direct benefits, but the sheer unexpectedness seems to imply that we are about to learn a lot about where these psychiatric & willpower problems really come from.

(The leading theory so far seems to be that inflammation is chronically dysregulated body-wide in a lot of Westerners, especially the fat ones, and this is somehow interfering with impulse control/learning/homeostasis, and the GLP-1/GIPs as a side-effect tamp it down, and allow natural recovery.)

Adderall helps to combat akrasia to an extent, though results may vary between people (possibly modafinal as well though I haven't tried it). Though it is far from a "magic pill" as the effects of the pill go away + side effects + utility from long term use is uncertain.

How easy would it be to develop a drug that's more effective than Adderall or the other ADHD stimulants? It was developed in the 1970s, nearly 50 years ago, and the fact that we don't have a better alternative right now tells me we picked the low hanging fruit. But are there active efforts to developing a better drug? I'm not sure.

A drug that fixes akrasia without major side-effects would indeed be the Holy Grail. Unfortunately I don't think caffeine does anything of that sort. For me it increases focus, but it doesn't combat weakness of will, avoidance behavior, ugh fields. I don't know about other existing drugs.